Sunday, August 7 The power is IN you

I am involved in a new domestic and sexual violence movement on Flagler College’s campus. The idea is so simple and it is so resourceful that it is a piece of cake to teach. We are putting all of the power in the hands of the bystander. We teach the whole thing thru the lense of a bystander. We are teaching people to do something that no one has to do something huge, but everyone has to do something. The whole premise is about breaking down barriers, knowing your comfort levels and your strengths. It’s about knowing there is ALWAYS an option. We teach them the three D’s to be direct, to distract or to delegate. It’s about everyone playing a small role in changing the culture. How on earth have they put together something and made it so simple and so resourceful? It’s simple, they are meeting needs with the correct attitude. It’s an attitude that when you see someone being harmed you have a job to do, because if it was someone you loved one of your children or grandchildren you would step in and do something. Well, as Christians we are called to be involved in the spread of the Gospel. We have barriers and we have weaknesses but Timidity shouldn’t be one of them. That is why Paul wants to encourage the timid, because it shouldn’t be that way and he is more direct with Timothy in his second letter to him. Encourage the timid – remind people who are a little reserved and less likely to speak out of God’s promises. Teach the timid that we were not wired that way, we weren’t put together that way, and help them. Don’t yell at them or put them down, encourage them along the way until they are ready to get plugged in. 2 Timothy 1:7 For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self discipline. First let’s address what Paul says to Timothy here about being timid. He says God did not give us a spirit of timidity. In other words you were not put together that way and come to think of it, the moment you accepted Christ and received the Holy Spirit you were now empowered with everything you will ever need to serve God in every capacity. Then, he says not only that you have three characteristics as a Christian to combat timidity. 1. Spirit of power - Think of power, the word power and it’s meaning. I grew up loving to watch wrestling. I liked Hulk Hogan and Jimmy superfly snuka, Macho Man Randy Savage and the list goes on and on. Sure the wrestling was entertaining but the real thing drawing me to it was the size and the power of those guys. They were almost super human. I watch the world’s strongest man sometimes on tv and I am in complete amazement as they accomplish feats that are mind blowing. Those guys do things that we cannot even relate to, but we watch in astonishment because it’s amazing. I obviously grew up in a drag racing house, I have been going to the drag strip since I was born. I love being at the track, the sounds, the feeling and the scenes are some of my absolute favorites. While I will admit I don’t race for the speed or the feeling of the power I do it for the competition. But horsepower is a cool thing, most any human being can sit behind the wheel of a car with more horsepower than they have ever felt and immediately they will smile and be blown away. Power, we all have a different picture that pops up but for all of us it is usually something we don’t have. I won’t ever be on WWE Raw, I won’t ever be on the world’s strongest man. But, I know the creator of all things on a personal basis and He has put inside of me a spirit. His Holy Spirit which is full of power and strength and there will never be a day that I don’t have the power to overcome the things the world puts in my path, never ever a day. But, I have to call on that strength. I shared with a young man during a training with chaplains a few weeks ago. I shared with him that to me there are two types of believers in Christ. Those who pray for no storms and smooth sailing, and those who pray for the strength and the ability to get thru life’s storms. It’s that second group that impacts the world for Christ. Each morning we need to call on God’s Spirit dwelling inside of us to empower us to face the day, it’s trials and it’s ups and it’s downs. Then it is up to us to walk in confidence thru the day, confidence that the power of God is living inside of us and we can take on anything life throws our way. 2. Spirit of love - You want to talk about power? What about the power of love? Love can be the driving force behind so many things. When we are in love we are blind to so many things. We overlook flaws, we overlook pitfalls and we many times leap blindly. These things we do for a love of a fallible human being. Yet, before we jump for God, before we leap we walk out and toe the line carefully and slowly. We want to know every detail, we want to know as much as we can and we slowly piece it all together and get our ducks in a row. Then we step out like this(crawl slowly across and hug the plank). 3. Spirit of self-discipline – What are we talking about with self discipline is the work that goes on behind the scenes. It is empowering to serve God, to love like Jesus but it takes work. But it’s work that is rewarding. I read my Bible each morning and I pray each morning and the more I do it the more I want to do it. I preach on Sundays and Wednesday nights and the more I do those things the more I want to do them. I started out a journey in April wanting to lose weight by my 40th birthday. I didn’t want to start my 40’s overweight so I started out dieting. I cut out carbs and started losing weight but eventually it wasn’t moving along fast enough so I started running on an elliptical machine, finally I added a workout to it. It became almost an addiction, I wanted to do something every day that led me to lose weight because it was a good feeling. But, it still wasn’t nearly the fulfilling I get from growing in Christ. Gary Player, one of the most successful international golfers of all time, lost count of how many times someone said to him, “I’d give anything if I could hit a golf ball like you.” After one particularly grueling day on the links, Player couldn’t resist correcting the person, “No, you wouldn’t. You’d give anything to hit a golf ball like me, if it were easy.” Player then listed the things one would have to do in order to achieve his level of play: “You’ve got to get up at five o’clock in the morning, go out and hit a thousand golf balls, walk up to the club house to put a bandage on your hand where it started bleeding, then go and hit another thousand golf balls. That’s what it takes to hit a golf ball like me.” God places within every believer strength and power. It isn’t just the ability to speak, it’s the ability to get involved boldly in the spread of the Gospel. It’s the self discipline to prepare for those moments of boldness each day. Close out with illustration of balance beam. Stand on the beam and say that this is how we feel when we are speaking out for God. Then lay down flat and hold on tightly to the beam and tell them that is what we really look like to God. Just like the gymnasts that we see in the Olympics doing amazing things on the beam, they started out clutching it and crawling across it. God wants more and can do so much more thru us as soon as we acknowledge that all of the power we need is inside of us already.

Sunday July 31

PJ is a driving machine, at the age of 9 I put her in the riding lawn mower here and let her mow the back field. She took off around and she was soo excited. She started out making laps and just having a blast but by about the third or forth time around the field she started driving with her feet and attempting to do tricks, why because she got bored with it. So we started letting her drive the cars and things around. Since about 11 she has been driving my truck around in private areas. She and I will go to the ballfield and hit some in the batting cage and then she will ask to drive around the parking lot some. We started out with the same rule I was given by my dad when he let me drive at a young age around parking lots. No gas pedal, you can drive but you cannot accelerate any. Well that lasted almost 3 minutes, next thing I know I we are zooming around the parking lot around 25-30 miles per hour and laughing and having a blast. Idle was too weak, too slow, not enough. Why on earth then is idle enough for us in life. This is a big scary world, not because of the bad people in it, but because of the number of people not doing anything about it. - Albert Einstein Warn the idle – the devil’s greatest tool isn’t temptation or sin, it’s a believer who isn’t doing anything active. Idleness is something that we fear. We fear it in many different capacities. There is the fear that we will waste our lives or waste our time. Switchfoot has a new song called Life is short I want to live it well. God does call us to be good stewards of our time and we don’t want to waste it. I am not a good sit around and watch tv, lay on the beach and do nothing person. If one of those is going on I prefer to be reading, because I want to be bettering myself in some way shape or form. There is also the fear that comes from idleness and it is that fear that drives us to issue curfews. Listen, when our teens go out to a movie or to dinner maybe to bowl or play putt-putt there is nothing at all wrong with that. But, we all know that when that wraps up there is a lot of sitting or hanging around and that’s when they are going to get into some sort of trouble. The old Ponce de Leon mall was a major hang out in some ways I wish my kids could experience it, but it was after the mall closed when kids were just sitting and standing around waiting for their rides that the most trouble occurred. I find this amusing the way different versions of the Bible use different words. The word Idle in the New International version has replaced the word unruly in the King James Version. I go two different places with those two different words. Idle says to me lazy, sitting around and doing nothing. Unruly says to me getting into trouble, not following the rules. It is a person with a lack of discipline and self-control. Let’s be honest teens who are on fire for Jesus and being used by God to do big things stay on the go. Then they meet someone, start dating someone or get into a group where church isn’t as important and they slowly disappear from church and more importantly they become idle. They stop showing up to encourage others and to be encouraged by others. There are believers right now who know they should be in church today who are not. Here’s the thing, we are working through this encouragement series because I think far too many people today are pushing. We are attempting to push people to Jesus. The old saying you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink is true. It’s oh so true, but you know what you can do? You can make him thirsty. That’s our job as believers in Christ to make others thirsty and we do that thru encouragement not thru yelling, pushing and being abrasive. At times it is going to be tough to tell the difference between the two things we are addressing here today. Idleness and timidity. You are going to know Christians, people who you know have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ who don’t seem to be doing anything at all with it. They could be idle and just doing nothing or they may be timid and just not comfortable doing anything. Either way it’s going to be encouragement that gets them into gear. That same person may be purely lazy or they may be afraid they will do something wrong. Encourage the timid – Let’s be perfectly honest for a minute, we all have a certain amount of timidity. But there is almost always strength in numbers. Just knowing that someone else has your back, is in your corner and wants to walk with you can be the difference between being idle and timid vs. serving and speaking out. An article by John Piper a pastor and well respected Theologian wrote addresses busyness and I have read and read and re read it before plugging it into this message and here it is. Busyness is moral laziness [because it is often a statement of our self-importance and our excuse to be inattentive to people]. . . . But God has given us just enough time to do what we need to do moment by moment to respond to him. And his grace is there; it is eternally present. Every moment is a sacrament where time touches eternity and there is exactly enough time to do what God has called us to do. “Busyness Is Moral Laziness” We all know busyness. Everyone is busy. And everyone complains about being busy. Busy, busy, busy. Busy is a buzzword (even phonetically). Most of us have grown fairly comfortable with busyness. But to call busyness (meaning a frantic, distracted lifestyle) “moral laziness” suddenly makes us uncomfortable. It means that busyness is not something that merely happens to us. It is something we choose. As objections begin to rise in our minds, it is helpful to remember what Jesus said to busy Martha: “Mary has chosen the good portion” (Luke 10:42). Martha, you have chosen something else. So why do we choose busyness? Prof. Hindmarsh says that too often we make it a “statement of self-importance.” We use busyness as a way of telling ourselves and, maybe more importantly, others how essential we are. Busyness is a way of posturing our significance. Ouch, right? But a more serious issue is that we choose busyness as a way to avoid having to make harder, sometimes more costly choices. Busyness can easily be an escape. It provides a convenient way to opt-out of wrestling through complex decisions that we will be responsible for. It’s much easier to be the victim of circumstances than to be responsible for a mistake. And an overflowing schedule can become a shield protecting us from the unpredictable, inconvenient, time-consuming needs of other people. It’s an effective cover. Who can argue with you if you have too many things to do? Jesus can (Luke 14:15–24). Now, of course there is such a thing as being legitimately too time-taxed to take on another need. We really are finite, with many limitations. “Just Enough Time” I need to break the very bad habit of saying I don’t have enough time. When I say this, I’m not only blaming my own moral laziness on my circumstances, I’m actually blaming God. I’m essentially saying that God is either insufficient or he’s stingy. In reflecting on this I’ve become more aware of our lack of faith for God’s provision of time. This past year I have taken on about 4 more programs thru work, it has me stretched thin but somehow there is always enough time. I still have ample time to prepare messages for Wednesdays and Sundays as well as time to coach softball and spend with my family in the evenings playing cards and such. I struggled mightily with accountability when I started working bi-vocationally. I turned in a schedule each week and everyone could know where I was when I was full time at ACBC. So I started posting what all was going on each day for people on facebook to know. Well that backfired in ways that I never saw coming, it meant I looked too busy so people didn’t reach out to me when I they normally would. God has given us just enough time to do what we need to do. “Every Moment Is a Sacrament” “Every moment is a sacrament where time touches eternity and there is exactly enough time to do what God has called us to do.” What a beautiful and fearful statement. It’s beautiful in that every moment belongs to God (therefore every moment is holy) and he gives each moment to us as a gift. And he gives us enough moments to provide for our callings, whatever they are. It is fearful in that we are stewards of these gifts and we will be held accountable for their investment. Here is the truth, we all walk thru this door at different places in life. Some are retired, some are in school still. Many of us are in debt up to our eyes and some are debt free. Some of us drove up here in a brand new car that is paid for, others an old beat up heap that also is paid for, some drove here in something that brings the stress of a huge payment once a month. Some of us live in a house that is in the best neighborhood in town, others don’t live in the best of neighborhoods. But there are two things that absolutely equal us all out. One is Jesus’ love, we all receive the same amount of it, it’s the same and consistent thru and thru. The second is time. We all get 24 hours in a day, we all get 7 days in a week, we all get the same about of time. Time is the great equalizer. The difference then is not in the amount of time we have but how we spend it. Most people want to invest their money wisely, why don’t we invest our time wisely. I make it a point each day to better myself in every area of life.